The Things I've Seen
by The Love Child Of McGonagall a
Summary: A short little fic about the life and times of Poppy Pomfrey.


The Things I've Seen...  
Well, I've seen some pretty horrific things actually. And when I say horrific, trust me, I mean horrific. But you can't take on a job like this without expecting to see horrific things. It's part of day the day life.  
When I first started working as a nurse, it wouldn't take much to turn my stomach completely. During my first month, I almost resigned at least a thousand times. But everyone around me told me that it would get better. That working at St. Mungo's was something you hardened to, eventually, until the time came when it wouldn't be necessary to work out how far away from the nearest bathroom you were every time a new patient came in.  
And so I stayed. Of course, I'd known that the job would be difficult, and incredibly unpleasant, ever since I'd decided that being a nurse what I wanted to do with my life. And what a long time ago that was...  
I think that when I first realised that I wanted to go into the medical profession was when my little sister fell and cut her knee. We normally argued like cats and dogs, but after I tidied up her wound, and made the gaping great whole in her jeans look considerably smaller, I was an angel in her eyes.....for about a week anyway.  
But that gave me my first taste of how good it felt to make people feel better. And I liked it. And so I decided that that was how I would spend my life. I went through Hogwarts, got the qualifications I needed, and started as a trainee at St. Mungo's. And like people said, it did get better. Sometimes I look back and laugh at how horrified I was at some of the ailments people came in with. I think I must have seen just about everything now.  
I'd been working for a few years, when a friend pointed out an advertisement in the Daily Prophet to me. Hogwarts was looking for a new nurse, the last one having moved to Tenerife. Working as a school nurse wasn't something I'd ever considered before, but the pay made my meagre salary look laughable. And money was hard to come by...  
So, after a little deliberation, I decided to apply. And within a week, I had a new job. In the summer, while the children were back at home, I would return to St. Mungo's for six weeks, and then go back to Hogwarts in September when the children returned. It was quite an enjoyable situation.  
For a long time, everything was near perfect. I had met a man, and fallen in love much more swiftly than I had ever known to be possible. We were married within six months, and talking about children after a year. My life couldn't have been better.  
And then it happened. There had been gossip, no more than rumours, that there was a Dark Force rising. A Dark Force that would supposedly kill us all and take over completely. Like most people I dismissed these rumours as nothing more than pub gossip. How foolish I was.   
Before anyone realised what was happening, we were taken prisoner. Not literally of course, although we might as well have been. But everywhere you went, people were dying. Just because a power hungry young man had decided that he wanted to be in charge.  
Of course at the time no one would refer to You-Know-Who as a power hungry young man, but in a nutshell, that's all he was. A lost soul who had chosen the wrong path in life, at the cost of hundreds of thousands of lives.  
Before long, it was hard to run into someone who hadn't lost their family, or friends, because everyone was suffering dreadfully. I considered many a time vacating my post at Hogwarts to return to St. Mungo's, where I was needed so much more than at a boarding school for children who were so much safer than they ever realised. And in the end, I decided I had to go where I was needed the most. Dumbledore understood of course, infact, he was happy for me to go, and assured me that if I ever wanted to return, then he would be more than happy to employ me again.  
And so I returned to the hospital, and it was dreadful. I thought that before I had grown accustomed to everything that could shake me, but then I hadn't seen the terrible things You-Know-Who could do.  
Working at Hogwarts while the crisis was on going had been one thing. I had suffered loss like everyone else, and tried to console others who had too. But never in my life had I seen things as completely heart breaking as I did while I was working back at St. Mungo's during that period. And I pray that I never have to again.  
Without a doubt, they were the worst years of my life, but they quickly began to worsen still. As my friends lost their lives, I became more depressed, and more fearful as the days went by. And then the worst thing that could possibly have happened, happened.   
I returned from the hospital one day, very late into the evening, to find the Dark Mark floating above my house. Suddenly, it seemed that everyone I had ever loved, was gone. They had all been inside, my mother, my father, my husband, my siblings...everyone.  
It was as if there was a huge void in my life. Work was a monotonous process, something that I did, almost without thinking, if that were possible. I went into a strict period of mourning, and I felt as if my heart had been pulled out and would never be returned. Quite frankly, I wanted to die.  
I didn't though. I was one of the lucky ones. And when one day I woke up to the news that the Dark Lord had vanished after failing to kill the small son of Lily and James Potter, I celebrated like everyone else. It seemed that, after all the dark days, things were going to be alright.  
And they were. Things quietened down, and people began to re-build their lives. I don't know if you could say that I 'recovered' from what had happened, but I no longer dwell upon what might have been all the time. I returned to Hogwarts soon after the Dark Lord's reign of terror ended, and things slowly began to sink back into a routine.  
After so many years have passed, I will never be able to forget what happened, but I can, at least, put it behind me.  



End file.
